Clocking Femtosecond X Rays

A. L. Cavalieri,¹ D. M. Fritz,¹ S. H. Lee,¹ P. H. Bucksbaum,¹ D. A. Reis,¹ J. Rudati,² D. M. Mills,² P. H. Fuoss,³ G. B. Stephenson,³ C. C. Kao,⁴ D. P. Siddons,⁴ D. P. Lowney,⁵ A. G. MacPhee,⁵ D. Weinstein,⁵ R. W. Falcone,⁵ R. Pahl,⁶ J. Als-Nielsen,⁷ C. Blome,⁸ S. Düsterer,⁸ R. Ischebeck,⁸ H. Schlarb,⁸ H. Schulte-Schrepping,⁸ Th. Tschentscher,⁸ J. Schneider,⁸ O. Hignette,⁹ F. Sette,⁹ K. Sokolowski-Tinten,¹⁰ H. N. Chapman,¹¹ R. W. Lee,¹¹ T. N. Hansen,¹² O. Synnergren,¹² J. Larsson,¹² S. Techert,¹³ J. Sheppard,¹⁴ J. S. Wark,¹⁴ M. Bergh,¹⁵ C. Caleman,¹⁵ G. Huldt,¹⁵ D. van der Spoel,¹⁵ N. Timneanu,¹⁵ J. Hajdu,¹⁵ R. A. Akre,¹⁶ E. Bong,¹⁶ P. Emma,¹⁶ P. Krejcik,¹⁶ J. Arthur,¹⁷ S. Brennan,¹⁷ K. J. Gaffney,¹⁷ A. M. Lindenberg,¹⁷ K. Luening,¹⁷ and J. B. Hastings¹⁷

 

¹FOCUS Center, Departments of Physics and Applied Physics Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
²Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA
³Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA
⁴National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA
⁵Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
⁶Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
⁷Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
⁸Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestrasse 85, 22607 Hamburg, Germany
⁹European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, 38043 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
¹⁰Institut für Optik und Quantenelektronik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany
¹¹Physics Department, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
¹²Department of Physics, Lund Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 118, S-22100, Lund, Sweden
¹³Max Plank Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Am Faßberg 11, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
¹⁴Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1, 3PU, United Kingdom
¹⁵Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University, SE-75124 Uppsala, Sweden
¹⁶Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
¹⁷Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory/SLAC, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA

(Received 2 November 2004; published 24 March 2005)

Linear-accelerator-based sources will revolutionize ultrafast x-ray science due to their unprecedented brightness and short pulse duration. However, time-resolved studies at the resolution of the x-ray pulse duration are hampered by the inability to precisely synchronize an external laser to the accelerator. At the Sub-Picosecond Pulse Source at the Stanford Linear-Accelerator Center we solved this problem by measuring the arrival time of each high energy electron bunch with electro-optic sampling. This measurement indirectly determined the arrival time of each x-ray pulse relative to an external pump laser pulse with a time resolution of better than 60 fs rms. ©2005 The American Physical Society

^{Full text (requires subscription of the journal)}